This is not a song about Alice’s Restaurant. Among the two dozen or so traffic fatalities reported during this past Thanksgiving holiday weekend: “Fast and Furious” star Paul Walker, who was a passenger in a Porsche Carrera GT. Roger Rodas was driving an estimated 70 to 90 MPH through a curve signed for 15 MPH at a Santa Clarita industrial park when he lost control and wrapped the car around a tree. Investigators speculate speed may have been a factor in the fatality, which killed both the driver and passenger.
More carnage below the photo of the remains of Rodas’s Porsche.
Driver of a Toyota Corolla rolls through a stop sign and kills his passenger in Tulare County.
Shortly after midnight after Thanksgiving Day, a man crashed his car into the center divide of I-80 near Solano Avenue in Richmond, CA, got out of his car and was subsequently hit by multiple vehicles. CHP closed westbound I-80 for two hours to investigate and clean up the remains.
Several hours later, a Recology trash collection truck hit and killed a woman walking across the 7th Street offramp for I-80 in San Francisco.
Brake lights ahead! That can’t possibly mean a possible hazard, right? A man walking in the westbound lanes of the Dumbarton Bridge was picked up by bridge workers in a work truck. The man, who dispatchers report was “possibly inebriated,” then jumped out of the truck and ran across several lanes of bridge traffic, attempting to wave down cars. Several cars stopped to avoid hitting this man, but he was eventually struck down by other drivers who failed to recognize the potential hazard in front of them. Westbound Dumbarton was closed for about two and a half hours.
“Party in car bloody and not moving” notes this terse CHP dispatch of a black Lexus versus a pole that resulted in a fatality in Solano County near Dixon, CA. And another Dixon fatality when the driver of a Saturn hit a tree.
Prank bomb threat closes a San Diego interstate highway for two hours on Thanksgiving Day.
Driver perishes after sending car into water filled ditch in Yolo County, California.
The Willow Glen Neighborhood Association posted photos of the aftermath of this mid-morning property damage hit and run in San Jose last week. The driver of the silver car went up and over the parked vehicle on a residential street with a 25 MPH speed limit then ran away on foot.
I post these carnage stories to counter frequent claims that cyclists cause danger, mayhem, destruction and evil on California roads. The proper focus on safety should be on the devices that are the cause of loss of life and injuries.